The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar

By Kevin Baldeosingh

'Tell me if I am mad,' Adam Avatar, a copper-skinned man with startling green eyes, asks Dr. Surendra Sankar, a psychiatrist in Trinidad. Aged forty-nine, there is some urgency in his request, since he fears that, very shortly, when he reaches his fiftieth birthday, he will die at the hands of his nemesis, the Shadowman. Adam believes he is nearly five hundred years old and has gone through nine previous incarnations, including living as a fifteenth century Amerindian, a Spanish conquistador, a Portuguese slaver and a Yoruba slave, a female pirate and a female stickfighter in nineteenth century Trinidad. Not unreasonably, Dr. Sankar reaches for his pad to prescribe drugs used to control delusional states. As the consultations continue, Dr. Sankar's professional expertise is tested to the full. On the one hand, his patient appears to behave with impeccable rationality, on the other, the accounts Avatar brings of his previous lives suggest buried traumas of the most worrying kind. And when Avatar's narratives of the experiences of his past selves are revealed to have an authenticity that cannot be explained away, Dr Sankar's perplexity grows.

Kevin Baldeosingh brings a powerful narrative drive to this unfolding mystery, a Joycean variety of historical Englishes to the accounts of Avatar's lives and a vivid and persuasive grasp of each historical period. But the novel also asks uncomfortable questions about the nature of power, the relationship between abuser and abused and the malleability of the person in different social environments. Set in Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad, "The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar" is an epic account of the New World experience and a provocative enquiry into the nature of history and what it means to be a Caribbean person.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peepal Tree Press
• Release date: May 1, 2005
• ISBN: 9781845232252

Book preview

Introduction

My name is Dr. Surendra Sankar. I am a consulting psychiatrist. Between March 1 and December 27, 2000, I had regular consultations with Mr. Adam Avatar. His case is unique in my experience and, as far as I am aware, in the psychiatric literature. This is one reason I have decided to publish the following account, but it is not the main reason.

I wish to assure the reader that I did not come to my decision lightly. Doctor-patient confidentiality is the most sacrosanct of all professional relationships. There is also the fundamental principle of the medical profession, Hippocrates’s first axiom: Do no harm. My dilemma lay in these two principles being in conflict. I pondered the problem for several months. All my colleagues advised me against publication of these transcripts, notes and records. At the very least, they pointed out, I ran the risk of ruining my professional reputation. I might even have my licence revoked. The reader holds my decision in his hands. When the entire account has been read, I hope the reader will agree that I made the right choice.

When I first met Mr. Avatar on February 29, I had no inkling that he was to provide me with a unique professional experience. He was unusually relaxed, but that is sometimes a trained characteristic of people who live under great stress. What I first noticed about him was his skin. He had a glowing copper complexion, like a new penny. Coupled with his trim, athletic appearance, he seemed to be bursting with health. When he told me he was forty-nine years old, I thought he was lying. But his birth certificate confirmed the truth of his statement, although, as it turned out, he believed himself to be more than five hundred years old.

I did not discover this at our first meeting. That was spent with Mr. Avatar interviewing me (hence the reason I do not count it as a consultation). No patient had ever done that. He was pleasant, but quite persistent. He evaded my questions. He wished to know about my childhood, my education, my ideological beliefs, my views on marriage, sex, art, my favourite books and films. He was particularly interested in my religious beliefs, and seemed pleased when I said I was an agnostic. I readily answered all his questions. We established trust.

Finally, I asked him what he had come to me for.

He took out a large envelope and said, ‘I want you to read this and tell me if I am mad.’

I said, ‘I will read it and I will tell you if you have a problem we need to deal with. When would you like to come back?’

‘As soon as you read it,’ he said.

I said, ‘I can read it today.’

‘Then I’ll come back tomorrow,’ he said.

Before he left, I conducted a standard physical examination. I found Mr. Avatar to be in excellent condition. He had the physique of a healthy thirty-year-old. That night, I read the story of Guiakan, the Taino, who Mr. Avatar believed was his first incarnation.

Chapter One: Amerindian

I

My first memory is of walking out of a cave. That was more than five hundred years ago. My people believed that our race came out of a sacred cave on the small land of Ciguayo, that came to be called Hispaniola and later Haiti. They said I was a special gift from our supreme zemi Yúcahu, who was the lord of the cassava and the sea. When I was older, I heard that my mother had walked into the cave with her stomach flat like a buren and come out three days later as round as a batey ball. The bohutis said that Atabey, the goddess of fertility, had planted the seed in my mother’s womb. That made me kin to Yúcahu, who was Atabey’s son. My mother never removed her virgin’s headband. That caused much talk among the tongue-waggers, but their gossiping was whispered because of what the priests had said.

When her time came, my mother returned to the cave with a bahanarotu, who was to be the midwife and to read the signs of birth. The village waited outside. The cave was somewhere in the mountains that rose in the centre of the land like the backbone of a sleeping giant. The people waited three days, and when I walked out there was a great and fearful silence. I remember the tall trees and my people with their bodies like smooth wood, and the green land falling away to a silver strip of sea, and I remember the bright blue sheet of the sky. I must have fainted, for I remember nothing more until I awoke in the bohio of the cacique.

They told me later that my mother had died in giving birth to me and that the bahanarotu was found raving mad in the cave. So the Ciguayao people, and later all Tainos, knew that my coming was not a good sign. The priests talked about what to do with me. The bahanarotu only said the same words over and over again in her madness –‘water demon, water demon’ – but it was not clear whether I had been sent to stand against the demon, or whether I was the demon itself.

My people were not a fearful race, for Taino means ‘noble’, and the priests said that Yúcahu would not have sent me unless it was for a good purpose. Talk stopped when our cacique, Guacamari, took me as his son and brought me to live in his bohio. Guacamari was a good chief and a good man, but he did not take me in because the sap of his heart overflowed. Later, when I was older, I understood that he won respect in the eyes of the other five caciques of the small land by what he did. If I were a protector, having me in his home would bring fortune. If I were a demon, he showed courage by taking me into his home. In either case, I was kin to Yúcahu, as my sea-green eyes showed. But it was all for nothing. Neither I nor any other Taino could have protected us from the guamikinas, the covered men. Our god, Yúcahu, gave the Tainos cassava; their god, Jehovah, gave the guamikinas swords. My true nature was one which no one could know. Only the mad bahanarotu, whose name was Maiakan, might have known. But she now spent her days mumbling to herself.

I stayed out of this woman’s way. She began screaming whenever she saw me. It was hard to keep out of her way, because Guacamari put her up in a hut right next to his own. He wanted her close if she ever began to speak in the voices of Atabey or Yúcahu or some other powerful zemi.

There was always a space between me and everyone else. How could there not, when at birth I was already a child of five seasons and, I was told, grew to the size of ten within one passing of the rains? I do not remember any of this. I only remember that this tale of my life was sung in the areyto, which told the deeds of our ancestors, and that particular song was not made until the covered men came and it was known that Yúcahu had sent me because of them. Then everyone understood why, even before I was born, my mother had said that my name was to be Guaikan, which means ‘precious crossing’.

I had no kin. My mother had been marked from childhood. Both her parents and her two younger brothers had been drowned in a storm when she was ten years old. Her father, who would have been my grandfather, was a trader. He rowed his canoa over the sea as far north as Guanahani and to many of the small lands in between, and even paddled as far south as Iére and up the rivers of the greatland for the stone tools and the gold ornaments that the Mayans made so well. It was on one of the short trips that the family was caught by a storm on the sea. The girl-child was the only one who survived. She was found two days later holding on to an oar by a lone fisherman coming from Cubanacan. So our people knew she had been protected by Yúcahu, and when she became pregnant by no man, no one was surprised. After she lost her family, she was brought up by her father’s brother and, even among our well-made people, was considered of great beauty. She was named Wai’tukubuli, which means ‘Tall is her body’. But by the time I was born, her father’s brother had died. He had been killed by a demon in the forest who had pierced his neck with a dart dipped in cassava juice. But I do not know if this is true. The imaginations of the village tonguewaggers were as fertile as the land itself. I was born shortly after my uncle’s death and my having no blood relations was a sign that I was indeed a Chosen One. What need has the kin of Yúcahu for any earthly family?

The grown-ups looked on me with respect, but because of this the children did not play with me. I had no friends until I was nearly a man, and then only one. This would be hard on a child anywhere, but it was especially hard on a Taino child. Tainos lived by three things – worship, cassava, and batey. I was allowed to help with the sweet potato and squash and beans in the small garden at the back of the bohio, but I never got to play batey with the other children. When they were playing hide, I was never asked to seek. When they were playing with a wooden ball between three or four of them, they never chose me to be on a team. But, like all small children, I was not aware of my hurt.

Batey was the centre of our lives. We worshipped the cassava because it was a crop that did not need much tending and it could keep in the ground for three seasons if need be. This left plenty time for batey.

This is what I was left out of. The only friend I had was the only other boy in the village who also did not play the game. His name was Caonabó. He did not have any parents, either. His mother had also died in childbirth and his father had rowed out to sea and never returned. Caon was a strange-looking boy because his kinfolk, given the newborn baby at the time of the yearly celebrations for the cacique’s zemis, did not bind his head with boards as carefully as they should have. As a result, his forehead was straight instead of sloping back from the brows as it should have been. He was not ugly but he looked like he was of another tribe, like the Arawaks or the Caribs. That was enough reason for the other children not to be friends with him, since children never like those who are different. This proves that most grown-ups stay as children inside.

Caon was called a bad boy by the grown-ups, because he was not interested in planting and would work in the fields only if forced to. He was also strange in his ways. He wore three times as many decorations as the grown-ups. He had coloured feathers stuck in his hair and on cotton strings tied around wrists and ankles. He wore several darts of wood and bone in his ears, and on them hung various pendants and a long feather. He did not just paste on the dyes which we put on their bodies to keep off insects, but pasted them on in different colours and designs. I thought he decorated himself to draw attention away from his odd features – a foolish idea, since his decorations made him look even stranger.

But it was not only his appearance that was not usual. He would disappear into the forest for half-a-day, but he never came back with any fruit or fish. When he did not go into the forest, he would spend hours sitting at the edge of the clearing, chipping stones into knives and whittling pieces of wood. This habit added to the strangeness of his body, because regular playing of batey made everyone’s bodies as taut and as flexible as carved spears. But Caon looked smooth and full, like an almost-ripe squash, and he did not have scars on elbows and knees like everybody else.

I did not have these scars either, but for a different reason. I did not play with the other children, but I was always busy. I went into the forest alone to try and catch iguanas, and climbed the trees to set traps for parrots, and I went down to the river that ran behind the village with a cotton net I had made myself to catch fish. I also walked to the sea and played on the beach with a batey ball that I borrowed from Guacamari. I did not tell him I was borrowing it. Batey balls were the most valuable and valued objects in the village. The balata trees, from whose sap the balls were made, grew only on the greatland. The small land Tainos got the balls by trade and they were kept by the cacique in his bohio. I knew Guacamari would never lend one to a child, kin to Yúcahu or not, and so I got a large cloth from one of my bohio mothers and I would conceal a ball in it when I was going into the forest or down to the beach alone. I became quite skilled at keeping the ball in the air using only shoulders and thighs and head. This did not mean I was good. After all, I was playing only against myself. But another child might have given up on batey entirely. To me that would have been admitting defeat. By practising batey, I refused to be defeated. It is in such small things that a man’s spirit truly shows itself, though there can be no pride in this since that spirit is given to him at birth. And so I played one-person batey every day in a cove where no one could see me. The only movement I could not do was the body dive and twist to keep the ball bouncing, because there was no one to bounce it back to me.

I was less than ten seasons old when I started doing these things, but there was no grown-up watching to stop me. Since I had no parents, it was easy to slip away. Guacamari ignored even his own children, as he was occupied with his duties, and his wives naturally paid more attention to their own children than to me. Once I came back at mealtimes or was there for planting, no one noticed my long absences. I was injured often when I first started running away. The first time, I fell from a tree and broke my leg. It hurt very much and I cried for hours, alone in the forest. But I was able to straighten the leg, and by the time I returned to the village late that evening, it was strong again. On another occasion, I was attacked by a quenk. But I ate some fruit and drank lots of water and my wounds closed enough so that when I returned home at nightfall no one noticed. I always got very hungry and very thirsty when I was injured, and the few times I was unable to get food or water I fell asleep and awoke healed, but very weak. I never had any scars. I did not think there was anything strange about any of this, and it was not until much later that I found out that other people were not like me. Yet I must have known by instinct, or at least by the power of observation that all small children have, that I was unusual. I always felt that other people were less brave than I. I was not afraid of anything. I think it was this bravery that prevented the other children from teasing me, as they teased Caonabó.

For all these reasons, I realized Caon was like me. I do not mean that we had anything in common. I mean that he was like me because he had nothing in common with anyone else, including myself. That in itself can be a stronger bond than same interests, tastes or character. I do not know whether he felt this same connection. He was about two or three seasons older than me, I think, but he was even more reserved and more separated. I, at least, had the respect of the elders. So it was I who made friends with him when, returning one day after a day’s iguana-catching in the forest, I almost tripped over him at the edge of the village clearing – I had not returned by the trail.

‘I am sorry,’ I said.

He was sitting cross-legged with a stone knife in one hand and a wooden bowl in the next. He looked up at me. He was surprised, but the expression had come on his face after I apologized, not when I stumbled out of the bushes. I suppose he was not used to politeness from the other small-ones.

‘It is well,’ he said.

I gestured with my right hand – I was holding two fat iguanas tied like bows with cotton string in my left – at the bowl he held in his lap.

‘Is that from Gonave?’

He was carving a pattern into the side of the bowl. When I looked closer, I realized that the bowl was unfinished. ‘No,’ he said.

I saw that he was pleased at my mistake. Gonave was a very small land on the sunset side of Haiti, and its people had such skill in woodcarving that it was said that even the food of the worst cook tasted wonderful when served in a Gonave bowl.

I put my iguanas on the ground and sat down cross-legged beside Caon. ‘Where did you get the knife?’ I asked. Most of our stone tools came from the mainland to the south.

‘I made it.’

‘I can never find a good stone,’ I said. My own knife was the usual limestone shard wrapped with cotton. Caon’s knife was a longish stone flaked until it had a razor edge. It even had a carved wooden handle wrapped in cotton.

He did not answer for a while, then he said, ‘I can show you a place where you might find some good pieces.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes.’

I looked up at the sun. ‘Tomorrow?’

‘That would be well.’

I got up and then I untied one of the iguanas and re-tied him, neck to tail. ‘You can have this for your pepper-pot.’

Another boy of my age would have said for your mother’s pepper-pot.

But neither of us could make that mistake. He nodded.

‘Thank you.’

We were friends from that day until he died twelve seasons later, in the giant stone bohio of the covered men.

II

We set out the next day before the sun got too high. But it was a cool day, for there were long black clouds in the sky. Caon led me into the forest, in a direction I had never gone before. It began to drizzle almost as soon as we left and then a heavy downpour started. We squatted underneath a large tree, still getting wet, but the pelting drops were broken by the tree leaves so they did not sting. We both wore loincloths so we did not have to carry our knives in our hands and would have bags for game or shells. Caon had stuck several things into his loincloth – his stone knife, as well as a limestone one, and a gouge made of conch shell. He had also strung the small bowl he had been carving the day before around his neck. Now, as we squatted beneath the tree, he began carving an intricate pattern around the outer rim of the bowl.

‘You like carving, eh?’ I said.

He nodded.

I said, ‘I like it a little. But it is hard work.’

‘It takes much effort. But it is not like work for me.’

‘How so?’ I asked. I expected to hear a secret of how to make work seem not like work.

‘I like to make things beautiful,’ Caon said.

It was not the answer I had been hoping for, but I thought it was a good answer. I did not know anyone else who liked to make things beautiful so much that they would carry a bowl on a trip just to do that. I had walked only with my knife and fishing cord wrapped around my waist. I sat and watched Caon carve his bowl in the rain. He used both his limestone knife and the shell gouge. He did not make a simple design of lines or circles as most people did. Instead, leaves and vines appeared around the lip of the bowl. I was almost disappointed when the rain stopped and he got to his feet.

We walked for a long time, often leaving the trails and at one point climbing down a low cliff, until we came to a small valley. One side of this valley was of gray-blue rock and at the foot of it were many pieces of stone. It did not take long to find a long, tapered piece that would make a fine knife-blade.

‘How did you find this place?’ I asked Caon, for even the men of our village did not know of it. Those who had stone knives had got them from trade.

‘I go everywhere,’ Caon said.

We started back up the trail. We did not want to reach back to the village too late. I said, ‘Is that what you do when you come in the forest? Walk on the trails, look at animals?’

Caon nodded.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘It gives me ideas. And I see interesting things.’

I didn’t quite understand this. Things were interesting if they were useful; and ideas were only ideas for getting food and other things of value. But Caon meant something more than this, which I could not grasp. But I did not mind. The stranger Caon seemed, the more I liked him. For I had always been viewed as by other people as strange, and I thought of myself in that way also. In most ways, we all become what we are told to be. But, as far as it is possible to escape that fate, Caon had done so.

III

So the moon grew ripe and was eaten many times Caon and I learned from each other. He taught me stillness, for we spent long times in the forest simply looking at animals. To learn the habits of animals – the trails they used, the prints of their feet and the shape of their droppings, where they fed and where they lived, how best to catch those worth catching – all this was basic knowledge for any Taino male. But Caon’s knowledge went further than this. He knew the movements ants made when signalling that there was food. He could tell what the different sounds of different animals meant – danger or a call for a mate. He knew that the presence of a certain plants or insects meant that certain types of animals were close by or would visit a particular area regularly.

With such knowledge, and given his skill with his hands, Caon could have been a master hunter. But he was not interested in killing animals, not even for food. Even fish he ate only sparingly. His kin, who would have known of his strange diet, must have thought Caon was mad. To not eat meat was like a man deciding to live by smoking tobacco alone. But Caon’s connection with the animals was a special gift from Atabey. While I squatted hidden in bushes upwind, he would stand in a clearing, making a strange squeaking sound and after a short time a tree rat would appear, small round ears upraised, nose twitching. Caon would stand perfectly still, still squeaking, and the hutia would eventually shuffle forward and sniff his feet, at which point Caon would be able to pet it and play with it. He could imitate most bird-songs almost perfectly and I had even seen him bring a parrot, which men spent long hours trapping, down from a tree on to his shoulder.

All the animals interested him – he showed me how even frogs had beauty, for, after birds and fishes, there are no more colourful animals. We would even spend most of a day just looking at spiders and their webs. And, because he had spent so much time in the forest, he knew where many useful plants and trees grew. I was able to please my bohio mothers by bringing back many roots and herbs from these trips, and I urged Caon to do the same for his relatives. But he did not see the point. He seemed to me at that time to have no need for affection. Once he had his knife and some duho wood, he seemed perfectly content. Caon would sit for hours, carving small animal pendants or belts or leaf designs into bowls. Many of these he just threw away. He seemed always to be trying to express some vision from inside himself and always failing.

I had no skills I could teach Caon in return for all he taught me. But once he showed me something, I often seemed to get an instinctive knowledge about it. It was I who told him that the eggs of a frog had to be fertilized outside the body and, later, he told me he had seen this. I also knew more about the various uses of plants than he did, though how I came to this knowledge I could not say. Caon already knew a lot from looking at what plants the animals ate.

In all this, I learned more patience than most Tainos had, though we were not a hurried people. It was not a hard lesson for one who had no sense of urgency about time. (In all my lives, I have always known instinctively that I cannot die.) That was part of what made Caon and I friends. And to learn that even ‘useless’ knowledge could be interesting, and that beauty could be its own point, provided a path to peace that I never equalled until five centuries later. I felt that Caon and I were closer to Yúcahu than other people, including Guacamari with his many zemis.

There were two things I gave Caon in return – my friendship and batey. I think he did not know his own loneliness until we became friends. I have said that he did not seem to need affection. His reaction to my appreciation for his work showed that this was not true. I was the first person to really see and appreciate Caon’s work. And, whether it was because of this, or whether it was just because he had reached a certain stage of maturity at the time we became friends, his carving got even better. There was a new precision and delicacy of line in his pendants, a sweeter curve and exactness to his carvings and bowl designs.

There were surprising advantages to Caon’s useless skill, as I saw. As he sat carving on the side of the clearing one morning, a girl named Nitika walked by and stopped in front of us. Although her breasts had barely begun to grow, Nitika already showed signs of becoming one of the most beautiful women in the village – her newly-rounded hips moved like flowing water and her smile was like sunlight. I straightened up and cleared my throat. But she only glanced at me.

‘Hello, Caonabó,’ she said.

Caon, concentrating on his carving, had not even realized anyone was there. I elbowed him.

‘What is it?’ he said, angrily, then looked up. Nitika smiled, and the day seemed suddenly brighter.

‘Greetings, Caonabó,’ she said again.

‘Mph,’ said Caon.

‘He gives greeting,’ I told her.

Her smile widened, and she gave me a glance that was almost a wink. Her interest was in Caon, but that little glance was enough to fill my belly. And I was curious. What had Caon done so this girl wished to speak to him?

Nitika squatted down beside us. She wore a little flap of cloth around her hips and her hidden femaleness was suddenly more enticing than the nakedness we saw all the time. She said, ‘I have watched you carving.’

Caon swallowed three times before he spoke. ‘I like to carve,’ he said.

‘I like your pendants,’ said Nitika.

‘Thank you,’ Caon said and then, proving himself not entirely a fool, felt around behind him and held up a small but well-carved pendant in the shape of a fish. ‘You may have this, if you wish.’

Nitika's smile was like the risen sun. ‘My thanks!’ she said. My mouth dropped open at her obvious delight. Who would have thought a beautiful girl would like a man, even one such as Caon, just because he could make beautiful things?

Caon threaded the pendant and Nitika leaned forward for him to tie it around her neck. Her face was close to his and she watched him all the while he was tying the pendant. He usually had very sure fingers, but he had to try several times before he got the knot right.

‘There,’ he said.

‘My thanks,’ Nitika said again. She stood up. Only then did Caon realize that the flap of cloth he was wearing around his loin had been raised like a door-curtain by the sudden pole of his penis. He crouched forward, and Nitika’s smile moved from mid-morning brightness to high noon’s.

‘I shall see you,’ she said, and turned and walked away. Her still lean but quite shapely buttocks rolled a little more than was necessary.

‘Oh Atabey!’ said Caon, wiping real sweat off his forehead. He got to his feet and rushed into the forest. I lay flat on the ground and laughed.

So Caon always had some females around him. This attention had certain bad effects – Caon was now even more disliked by the other males, who could not understand what the girls saw in him, with his indifference to hunting and over-decorated appearance. I did not mind the attention Caon got, because I naturally benefited as his best friend. I lost my virginity before he did, with Nitika’s older sister. This was only because I was more aggressive. Nitika almost had to beg Caon to sex with her.

It was around this time that our relationship with the other people of the village began to change. Our friendship had at first made us more, rather than less, isolated. The devil-child and the mad-boy had to become friends with each other since no one else wanted to be friends with them, said the tongue-waggers. But Caon and I were now becoming men. Hairs grew on our chins and we plucked them out or shaved them with conch shells. Hair grew on our lower bellies and we wore loincloths more often now. Females were now interested in us. Sexing with the girls was just part of growing up, but soon we would have to think about choosing a woman and starting a family.

Because we were becoming men, we could not vanish from the village as often as before. Now we had to be heaping the mounds of earth in the fields and digging the holes with coas for planting the cassava cuttings and the potato and the maize. We also had to hunt and fish and gather plants for the women to cook.

These changes were much harder on Caon than on me. It took him away from his carving, and at a time when his hands had just begun to acquire the skill to express his spirit. I was not very pleased at having to do all these common tasks, either. My batey had begun to swiftly improve now that I had a partner to practise with. Because it was just me and Caon, we spent a lot of time doing what would now be called drills. Even the best players among us got their skills only through actual play. So Caon and I had a more disciplined approach to the game. And, because of this, we were often absent from the fields and put the least amount in the pepper-pots. (Caon, refusing outright to hunt, put nothing at all.) One day Caon was beaten up by some boys. Later, Guacamari himself took me aside to tell me that I should work harder, especially since I was kin to Yúcahu. (Guacamari really meant especially since I was kin to him – a lazy son, even if adopted, embarrassed him as cacique.)

Caon and I met that night outside the village to talk about the situation. In the moonlight, his swollen face looked like a zemi’s. He had not been badly hurt, but the boys had pulled off and trampled all his feather armlets and his pendants. They had been angry because Caon had gone into the forest to do some carving when the rest of them had had to go to the fields. They had attacked him as he returned to the village around midday. No adult had interfered.

Caon was very angry. He planned to carve a powerful zemi that would bring down disaster on all the boys who had beaten him. He also wanted to go around by their families’ pepper-pots and put copious quantities of gioia herb in them, but I pointed out that that would make everyone in the bohio vomit, not just the boys.

‘I hate spending the day in the conucos!’ Caon said.

‘So do I,’ I said. ‘But the village must eat. We have to do our part.’

‘Then they should treat us as though we are part of the village.’

‘We must be patient,’ I said.

‘That is easy for you to say. You have a destiny.’

‘So do you.’

‘But I cannot depend on it. I must make it.’

‘How?’

‘I do not know!’

‘I will think of something,’ I said. But I made the promise only because he was my friend and I wished to comfort him. I had no idea what we could do to change our situation, except submit to the routine of the village. That was not a choice, though, since neither he nor I could live like that for the rest of our lives. And, odd as it may seem, that was the first time I asked myself the obvious question – could I die? But it is not really strange that I should have almost become a man before this question ever occurred to me, for even mortal youths tend to behave as though death will never find them.

A few days later, Maiakan, the bahanarotu, came out of her madness. It happened quite unexpectedly. She came out of her hut one morning, blinking in the sunlight, and asked one of my bohio mothers for some cassava bread. Her face was quiet, so everyone saw that the madness had left her. My bohio mother immediately called Guacamari, who came hurrying to see this miracle. He took Maiakan into the temple and they stayed there for a long time. When they came out, he announced that there would be a special celebration in three days.

The entire village became full of work. We usually had such celebrations twice in every season, but this time it was not only the people of our village who would be at the ceremony. All the chiefs of Ciguayo, with the nitainos of each village, would be attending – Guarionex, who ruled Magua; Guacanagar, chief of Marien; Canabó, ruler of Maguana; Behechio, who ruled Xaraguá; Higuanama, only woman chief of Ciguayo, who ruled Higuey. And – do not ask me how – even two chiefs from other islands, Hatuey of Cubanacan and Caicihu of Xaymaca, arrived on Ciguayo on the day of the celebrations. For this celebration was to end with a prophecy – everyone knew that Maiakan had come out of her madness to pronounce on the fate of all Tainos in the islands.

So in every bohio, cassava was peeled and grated, and you could almost hear the groaning of the many plaited straw sieves turning as they hung from the roofs as the poison was squeezed out. The dried cassava flour was then mixed with water and laid on the burens to bake. Fires burned day and night. Zemis were cleaned and bohios re-thatched. Pendants were fashioned, feathers dyed and several people carved guaizins to wear on their faces. Caoba was harvested, rolled into cigars, and new tabacos made to smoke it. The thin white smoke of simmering pepper-pots hung like a sheet over the village, with the men constantly bringing in fish and hutias and quenk and other animals to be cut up and thrown into the stew. The women picked the small, hot-tasting axis and beans and starchy hagis and added them to the pots. And, of course, all the batey courts were cleared, the earth beaten, and boundaries redrawn.

Maiakan remained in the temple for those three days. The only ones who saw her were Guacamari and two priests. They never carried in any food, only caoba leaves and new tabacos. I watched everything, for I knew that my fate was tied to whatever Maiakan would say on the day of the ceremony. Perhaps she might declare that I was sent to protect the Tainos or perhaps she would say I had to be sacrificed to protect the Tainos. I was very nervous, but not for my life. Even if I could be killed, I had concluded that doing so would be not be easy. No one, not even Caon, knew my secret. But what had Maiakan seen at my birth? Was it something that had revealed what I was, and was it that knowledge which had driven her mad? I had to know. So, on the second night, I went to the temple.

That large, circular hut was lit by a small flame on a raised platform in the centre and was filled with the smell of caoba smoke. In the flickering light, I could see zemis all around, on the ground or hanging on the walls. I stopped at the entrance. I was afraid. Then I went inside. Was I not kin to Yúcahu? Maiakan sat cross-legged on the platform, her head bowed. I thought she was sleeping but, as I walked up to her, she raised her head. I was ready to flee. But she only watched me.

She said, ‘Hello, child.’

‘Greetings, mother bohuti,’ I answered.

She was very old. Her hair was completely white and her face had creases at nose and mouth. I had never seen anyone like her before, since most Tainos died by forty seasons with their hair still as dark as night and faces as smooth as a windswept beach.

I said, ‘Do you remember me?’

‘No, child.’

I said, ‘I am Guaikan. You were bahanarotu at my birth.’

‘Ah,’ she said.

She took up a handful of wood chips and shredded caoba leaves and added them to the fire. The flames rose and the smoke grew thicker. Maiakan drew in her breath. I waited for her to say something, but she was quiet. She looked as if she could sit in this temple, breathing caoba smoke for an eternity, and I suddenly felt quite close to her.

‘Do you remember my birth? I asked.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Oh.’

I felt both disappointed and relieved. I drew in a deep breath, and the smoke made my head buzz as though a small insect was trapped behind the centre of my forehead.

‘So you do not know what you will say tomorrow night?’ I said.

She raised her thin shoulders. ‘I shall know on the morrow.’

I left the temple and did not sleep at all that night. But I was comforted. I knew now that Maiakan did not mean me harm. I fell asleep just before the sun rose but was awakened very soon by Guacamari himself.

‘It is time,’ he said.

I nodded. Guacamari’s face was shut away, but his gaze was sharp upon me. As I took up the calabash of water and bathed my naked body, I understood. At the end of that day, Guacamari might either have to sacrifice me or give way to me as cacique. He handed me a cloth to dry my skin.

I said, ‘I do not want to be cacique.’

He said, ‘We must do what Atabey commands.’

The other path we did not talk of. I saw then that he had true affection for me. For a moment, I thought of telling Guacamari my secret. But I kept silent.

We went out of the bohio together. In the plaza outside, the seven other caciques sat on wooden stools, surrounded by their nobles. Hatuey and Caicihu had arrived that very morning. Caicihu was a small man with a big head and a calabash belly. Hatuey was of middle height and looked very strong. He had brought five wives with him, who stood or sat around his duho. The other caciques looked all the same to me, well-decorated men with soft bellies and set mouths. Only Higuanama, the woman cacique of Higuey, stays in my memory. Like Maiakan, she was very old, but her hair was dark and her eyes, though bagged below, were very black and very sharp. She had high cheekbones, a nose like a parrot’s beak and a strong chin. She looked as though she had been very beautiful once. Even though she was sitting, I could see that she was tall. She wore a dress dyed in many colours that covered her body completely and she held a carved staff.

Guacamari went to the entrance of the temple and sat on his duho, a drum between his knees. I stood beside him. He began beating the drum and, from their bohios, the villagers came out carrying baskets of cassava bread, and wearing their finest ornaments. Guacamari began to sing, praising the gods, and the villagers raised their voices in chorus as they paraded around the plaza. The other caciques were silent. I saw that Guacamari was very aware of the occasion– no matter what happened at the end of this day, his village would always be important from now on. I looked behind me – the temple’s doorway was closed and, between the close-bound canes which made up the walls, smoke drifted. All the zemis had been placed outside against the walls. Only one zemi was not there – Atabey. Maiakan would stay inside with her, inhaling snuff made by crushing the seeds of the piptadenia tree until she had a vision and was ready to speak. It could happen any time, but I thought she would be in there until night came.

The singing and dancing continued. I wanted to join – even Caon was there dancing, almost hidden under his many pendants and coloured feathers. He wore a well-carved mask. I knew it was him only because he was wearing more ornaments than anyone else. Caon had his desire, at least for that day, to be part of the village. I looked at my people dance, and the idea of doom seemed foolish. I remained beside Guacamari. I could not truly be of them until Maiakan spoke, to tell what my place among the Tainos was.

The priests, as many as the fingers on my hands, came to the temple. They placed pendants of gold and semi-precious stones, as well as garlands of flowers, on the zemis. The people stuck a paddle stick down their throats and vomited into a small calabash and threw the calabash into the running river and came pure in body to the zemis. The women gave bread to the priests who offered it to the zemis with the proper prayers. After this was done, more dancing followed, with songs for the gods and for those chiefs who had died and were now with Atabey and Yúcahu. Maiakan still had not come out of the smoking temple. After the dancing, the bread which had been offered to the gods was broken and shared out to the heads of the families of each bohio. Usually, only some of this bread was eaten and most kept as protection against misfortune. I noticed that this time, though, no one ate any of the bread – in fact, most people slipped into their bohios to place the bread on their personal altars at once.

After this, everybody ate, most sitting cross-legged on the ground in groups, the nitainos on their stools, everyone talking. It was now midday. After the meal, people went to their bohios or under the trees to sleep, as we always did after midday. But the nobles and the caciques did not sleep. They sat and talked and smoked caoba cigars. They were waiting for Maiakan.

When the sun was one handspan lower in the sky, everyone came fully awake once more. Guacamari announced that the batey would begin and everyone clapped. He sent me into the bohio to bring out the cotton net which contained all seven batey balls of the village. The other caciques had also brought balls with them, so all the courts would be in use and people would play on the sides as well.

Guacamari chose teams and told them what courts to use. Three of the courts were given over to men teams and two to women teams. Those who were waiting to play made a circle and bounced the balls between them. None of the nitainos took part, but to everyone’s surprise Hatuey, the cacique from Cubanaca, joined the team on the largest court. He had brought elbow and knee protectors and his own stone belt. He was a very good player, skilled at keeping the ball bouncing by hitting it with his stone-belted waist, and very accurate at sending it past the other team’s defenders to score between the marked stones.

Caon and I stood around the edges of the batey groups, hoping to be asked in. We were old enough. But no one asked.

‘The kin of Atabey is not good enough to play batey, eh?’ Caon said.

‘The zemi I made for today’s celebration received the most bread, but its carver is not good enough to play batey, eh?’

‘I know what to do,’ I said.

I went to Guacamari. We had been watching for some time now and the sun was already only a handspan above the horizon. Guacamari was lying on his duho watching the match on the largest court. Caon stood a little way off, listening.

‘Cacique,’ I said.

‘Yes, son?’ he said, his eyes still on the game.

‘I want to play in a game today.’

‘You do not play batey,’ he said, not even watching me.

I opened my mouth to say I did, then thought better of it.

‘Today is the day I should start.’

I spoke very firmly and now he looked at me.

‘Why don’t you practise with one of the groups?’ he said, not unkindly.

‘No. I want to play.’ I hesitated, then said, ‘Yúcahu commands it.’

Guacamari straightened up. ‘How do you know this?’

‘I dreamed it after the midday meal.’

‘Are you certain of this?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded. ‘Then you must play.’

‘And Caonabó was in the dream, too.’

Caon’s mouth dropped open.

‘Then he shall play too, on the main court,’ said Guacamari.

Caon began to shake his head, but Guacamari glanced around and he froze in mid-shake. I, too, became a little nervous.

‘Well, perhaps not on the main court...’ I said.

‘Nonsense!’ said Guacamari. ‘If Yúcahu came to you in a dream on this day, it is clear that you must play batey on the main court. Any other would be an insult to the gods.’

To this day, I do not know if Guacamari was serious or if he just decided to play me along. His face was perfectly serious, but I am sure that I saw a little laughter in his eyes.

‘The main court? The main court!’ Caon almost screamed as we went off to put on borrowed knee and elbow protectors. ‘We are going to make complete fools of ourselves. Bigger complete fools!’

‘Be calm,’ I said, tying on the wooden cups. ‘We know how to play. We have been doing it for many moons.’

‘Only between ourselves. These men have been playing for seasons! And we have never played in a team.’

‘We shall be all right,’ I said. I checked to make sure the cotton padding was firmly in place below the cups on my right elbow and right knee.

‘Oh, I am sure we shall be well-loved. People like a good laugh.’

‘We shall be all right,’ I repeated.

And so it was we had our first batey game, in front of the entire village on the main court on a team of only ten persons, instead of thirty where we could at least have kept out of the way. I shall not tell you that Caon or myself scored the winning goal or some such story. But we performed well enough and at no point did the ball come to rest with either of us. Our team lost, but that was because of the skill and speed of Hatuey on the other side. When we walked off the court, Guacamari looked upon me with pride and I saw the head of Caon’s household actually clap him upon the back. It was enough.

IV

Maiakan came out of the temple a little while after the sun had set. Word passed through the village quickly and everyone gathered to hear the words she would speak. A large fire had been built in the centre of the plaza. Maiakan sat cross-legged on one side. The seven caciques sat on their duhos to the right of her and the other priests stood the left. I sat opposite, watching her over the flames. Her gaze was unfocused and her eyes looked like small eggs in her wrinkled face.

The head priest, whose name was Xiaiabo, said. ‘All are here, O bahanarotu.’

‘All are here,’ Maiakan repeated.

Xiaiabo lifted his arms. ‘You have meditated long and well, O bahanarotu. Speak now so we may know what lies ahead.’

‘Yúcahu, he who has a mother but no beginning, has spoken to me,’ Maiakan announced, and a sigh like a passing breeze went through the people.

‘Speak to us the words of the invisible one, O bahanarotu,’ said Xiaiabo.

Now Maiakan’s voice changed, becoming a voice that was neither male nor female. ‘Brief shall be the enjoyment of life,’ she said and, although I was looking at her right across the jumping flames, I did not see her parted lips move. The villagers stirred, but were silent as death.

Maiakan spoke again. ‘The covered men shall come, rule, and kill.’

‘What do these guamikinas want, O bahanarotu?’ asked Xiaiabo.

One word issued like doom from Maiakan’s unmoving lips.

‘Guanin.’

There was a stir of surprise. I fingered the necklace that Caon had made for me moons ago. The alloy of gold, silver and copper was beautiful, but it was nothing to kill for.

‘And if we give them guanin, O bahanarotu?’

‘The covered men shall come, rule, and kill.’

Xiaiabo looked around at all the caciques before asking the next question. His job was interpretation, but in that was also the need to find a path away from the doom. ‘And what of the boy, he who was named Guaikan, O bahanarotu?’

‘Brief shall be the enjoyment of life. But he shall preserve the Tainos.’

And again there was a stir through the crowd. I felt my body relax and

I was surprised, because I had not known I was tense.

But Xiaiabo strove for clarity, as a good head priest should.

‘He is our protector, O bahanarotu?’ he asked.

‘No! He is preserver of the Tainos, not protector, for none can protect against the guamikinas.’ Now that voice, that was of neither a man nor a woman, shrieked into the night. ‘The covered men shall come, rule, and kill!’

And with that Maiakan’s head fell forward and she was silent.

Xiaiabo stepped forward and, stooping beside her, put his hand to her breast. Then he rose, shaking his head. ‘Atabey has taken her.’

I sat where I was, a sudden burden on my shoulders. I was Preserver, but not Protector. What did this mean? Suddenly, I found that I would have preferred if Atabey had sent me to be sacrificed. For the burden I felt was the weight of the Tainos in all the small lands, and I did not think I was strong enough to bear it.

V

Life went on as always after that day. The caciques returned to their chiefdoms and Yúcahu’s words spread throughout the Taino villages, even to the Mayans and the Aztecs on the greatland. The prophecy had been made – what was to be would be. As always